When different researchers using different techniques arrive at the same conclusion, the authority of that conclusion is enhanced. So I am pleased to see that that some new neuroscience research has reached the same conclusions that Millward Brown arrived at decades ago through traditional consumer research.

The new research, funded by the U.K.’s Thinkbox and reported in Marketing Week, offers a fascinating parallel to learning gleaned over the years from Millward Brown tracking and pretesting.  Here is just one of the findings from the Thinkbox research and how it fits with Millward Brown’s learning.

Recently Google Alerts brought me a link to Headlight, a blog on digital and automotive trends from Razorfish. There I found a post promoting a new metric for measuring brand equity, titled, “The new brand bealth metric: Your SIM Score.” The “Brand Bealth” metric is based on social media influence.  I see some real issues both with the post and the metric, and they go way beyond the fact that the title is misspelled.

Razorfish introduced its SIM (Social Influence Marketing) Score in July 2009. Since then, the article states,

If you have been reading the industry news in the United States, you will see that TV is back in favor. Spend is up, upfront CPMs are higher and - shock, horror - research finds that TV still drives word of mouth. Meanwhile there have been several articles that suggest that marketers are still scratching their heads when it comes to social media. Hopefully the increase in TV spend does not signal a return to the familiar over the new, because TV and social media are complementary to each other, not replacements.

At the MRIA in Toronto a couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of listening to Donna Goldfarb discuss the future of research. Donna, Unilever’s VP of consumer and marketing insights, made many observations that resonated with me, but what really made me stop and think was her assertion that we are now living in an opinion culture: a culture in which people are used to voicing opinions, rating things, and choosing among options. What, she queried, was the role for researchers in that culture?

A recent article in AdAge raised the question of whether advertisers might be moving from a recession strategy of focusing on rational benefits to a post-recession emphasis on more emotional benefits. My comment to a colleague that you cannot have a rational response without an emotional one sparked an email debate, the conclusions of which I summarize here.

First of all, we need to distinguish between what an advertiser seeks to achieve and how a consumer responds. An advertiser may select a functional or price-related message in an effort to evoke a rational response, or a touching and poignant story or idea to evoke an emotional response. But how consumers respond to these different types of communication will always start with how they instinctively feel about it.